> 3. Steals a web session, cached password or authentication token, resulting in compromise of employee credentials to be used elsewhere (e.g. reused to access enterprise VPN).
How do you do this without a browser vulnerability (and assuming it's not also XSS/CSRF like the previous point)?
You can do this with chains of vulnerabilities, including but not limited to insecure redirects, CSP bypasses, insecure cookies. Another useful technique is session fixation - you give your victims sessions you've started and often their SSO experience will connect _their_ credentials to _your_ session.
Also to distinguish between #3 and, XSS in #2 was intended to mean "persistent stored XSS" as opposed to "reflected XSS". In the case of reflected XSS, this can be chained with CSP bypasses and insecure cookies to grab out e.g. bearer tokens.
My overall point is that heap fung shui 0day not required for 1-click ownage. In practice, I've not had to burn browser 0day to compromise organizations or their customers.
I assume you're right on those techniques, but 2 things:
1. It sounds like they'd have to be pretty well targeted against the precise systems of that particular company in order to work. Which would tend to suggest more targeted spear-phishing attacks and extensive recon being done against the company systems somehow before anybody launched a real black-hat attack.
2. At that point, it feels hard to blame the individual employee versus whoever misconfigured those corporate services in the first place. Though I would guess it's fairly common for those kind of things to happen due to many systems being set up without the help of true experts and the unlikeliness of a real attack against them without either a highly-skilled black hat targeting them or securing the services of a skilled and prices pen test team.
1. You are correct. I would measure the effort in terms of a small number (1-3) weeks of recon and targeting for a team of two.
2. I agree. Individual employees are not at all to blame. Companies who are blaming their employees for getting phished are doing it wrong. The correct action to take is to inform employees and build the other kinds of mitigations mentioned elsewhere in this topic tree.
How do you do this without a browser vulnerability (and assuming it's not also XSS/CSRF like the previous point)?